The Elden Ring studio’s next project is a complete mystery, but we’ve got some theories. Okay, requests.
For the first time in years, we don’t really know what FromSoftware is up to.
Sekiro was announced in 2017, just months after the Dark Souls 3 DLC The Ringed City marked the end of the trilogy. Just three months after Sekiro released, FromSoftware announced Elden Ring, and Armored Core 6 popped up during the development of Elden Ring’s expansion. But now Elden Ring is done—at least for now, as Miyazaki has certainly left the door open to a sequel. And Armored Core 6 seems done, with no indication that an expansion is coming, though I wouldn’t be shocked to see one pop up fully formed before the end of the year. But maybe FromSoftware goes dark for awhile. Maybe its next announcement is a year or more away. A terrible thought!
Patience is not my greatest strength, and I know I’m not the only one wondering what FromSoftware’s next game will be. As more of the PC Gamer team wrap up Shadow of the Erdtree, we’ve started speculating about what the studio might do, and also sharing what we really want it to do. Here’s what we’re hoping comes next, recorded for posterity so we can look back on how completely off the mark we were when FromSoftware announces it’s taking over development of Beyond Good & Evil 2 so we can all put it behind us. A full-on co-op game
Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: I’ve played every Souls game like a co-op experience, even if they weren’t truly meant to be played that way. In Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition I used a mod that prioritized the summon signs of my Games For Windows Live friends list. In Dark Souls 2 and 3 I played all the way through with friends, each of us effectively beating the games twice by summoning into one another’s worlds. Co-op does make these games easier which I’m certainly not going to complain about, but the bigger draw for me is simply going on these journeys with a companion and experiencing those triumphs, discoveries and PvP invasions together. The Souls co-op experience is as messy as it is thrilling.
In the Dark Souls days I admired the way FromSoftware stuck to its odd summoning design and eschewed the more traditional co-op experience of other games, but over time they’ve made co-op easier and easier without fully embracing it. It’s odd how frictionless summoning is in Elden Ring, yet with huge limitations like not being able to ride your horse or even cross the threshold from the world map to a cave. It feels less like intentional design and more like limited technology. When I interviewed Hidetaka Miyazaki about Shadow of the Erdtree, I had to bring up the fantastic Elden Ring Seamless co-op mod, and was heartened to hear him say that he wasn’t opposed to the mod, and may even consider “total co-op” for a future game. That’s light years away from a guarantee, of course, but at this point it’s what I really want in FromSoftware’s next game. I want co-op to be core to the experience, even if it bums out the Souls obsessives who want to 1v1 every boss without getting hit. Gimme FromSoftware’s version of It Takes Two and I’ll be the happiest Tarnished in the land.
